Psalms 29

Psalms 29:1-11

The judgment-storm with which God comes into the world, to give it the “expected end.” A psalm of David. It will be noticed how all the psalms of this series have led one into another. The “integrity and uprightness” which “shall preserve me”, at the end of the twenty-fifth, commences, and is the main theme of the twenty-sixth. This again, in its “Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house,” gives us the theme of the twenty-seventh. The twenty-seventh, with its experience of Jehovah’s kindness and the closing moral of this, makes way for the twenty-eighth, in which the test of experience is the subject. The twenty-eighth prays for and prophesies the judgment of the wicked, and now the twenty-ninth shows us the passage of that clearing storm which, manifesting and leaving Jehovah supreme over the earth, leaves His people to peace, henceforth undisturbed forever. This twenty-ninth psalm celebrates therefore the day of the Lord in its prostration of human strength and display of Jehovah’s might, which after all are the central lessons for man to learn, when once He has learned what Jehovah Himself is. It is this with which the twenty-fifth psalm opens the series, the display of righteousness in grace, which known gives God His throne in the hearts of His redeemed people. Henceforth the process of sanctification is in the subjecting of the soul to Him, -the anticipation in faith of this day of the Lord in its inner meaning, -the result being perfect blessing and abiding peace: “Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me; and ye shall find rest to your souls.” (Matthew 11:28.) The psalms following the twenty-fifth give us in order, first, the separation of the saint from sinners; secondly, that it is a separation to God; thirdly, to live a life of experimental realization of His presence in the circumstances and conditions of it. The final psalm here shows us the conditions of the realization itself, which is only to say, His governmental ways with us: simple enough if we know but a little who are these two who have come to walk together; God with all His grace forever God; and man His creature, only (and then how fully) capable of blessing so. This shows ‘how suitably this psalm ends the present series; while its dispensational form brings it into relation with the prophetic character of the Psalms in general, which has been abundantly established in our study of them.

1. The psalm begins with the exhortation to the “sons of the mighty” to give Jehovah His place of supremacy over all. It is surely not an address to angels, as perhaps mostly held, but to the mighty of the earth, in view of what follows, -a message like that of Rev 14:6-7, the message of the “everlasting gospel,” which proclaims the coming kingdom of God. They are to ascribe glory and strength to Jehovah as the only Source of these. They are to give Him the glory of His Name, the Ever-living, the Unchanging, abiding the same amid all creature changes; and to give Him allegiance in the only possible way in which He can accept it, adorned with the beauty of the holiness He requires.
2. Now Jehovah’s voice is heard approaching, the sound of an impending storm, but no mere storm. Jehovah’s voice is heard above the watery canopy of the expanse, controlling and directing the judgment in its path. It is the God of glory who thundereth; and the waters gathering are indeed “great waters.” We see it rise and spread: we hear the voice of “power” increasing to awful “majesty.” Then the crash comes, and the cedars of Lebanon, the type of loftiness of creature stature, receive the force of the blow, and are shivered and broken down before it. So the prophet announces the on-coming “day of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:11-14): “The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low; and upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan; and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up.” This last the psalm goes on to now: “He maketh them also to skip like a calf: Lebanon and Sirion like a young aurochs.” It is no hyperbolism, nor untruth to nature, nor are we to think of an earthquake, which would introduce another element from that with which we are occupied.

The storm is not a common storm; and the hills themselves tremble and start like a frightened beast, before Jehovah. The governments of the earth seem to be represented here, as the trees represent the individual potentates: all that is most stable quakes.

Amid all this comes the terrible forked flame, -the light, and God is light, but God manifest in judgment, -pure wrath upon the evil. The next verse shows the limit of the storm. Coming from the north of the land of Israel, from Lebanon and Hermon (Sirion), it sweeps to beyond the territory of Judah in the south, disappearing in the wilderness of Kadesh-barnea, the place in which the people had wandered so long after the exodus. Thus it covers the land in its breadth and length, while, of course, it does not follow that it is spent with this. This is, however, the limit of the prophet’s observation; -for true prophet he is, -and the course of the storm is that of the invasion of Israel’s foes in the last days, -an invasion with which the day of the Lord is identified in its early part (comp. Joe 2:1-32).

God uses the foe as His rod in a chastisement which works repentance; coming Himself then for their deliverance. It is the “great and terrible day of the Lord”, but it ends in refreshment, revival, and eternal salvation. The final verse here gives us the end in a twofold way. In the first place, the hind is made to calve: the new birth comes for the nation, hastened by that awful visitation which God uses to accomplish blessing. On the other hand, the forests are stripped, which is the judgment-work itself. This is the double aspect of the work of Him who is perfect in it all, and in whose temple -the place where He is seen and known -“all of it” (not, I think, the temple itself or those in it, which would not be in the line of the truth here; but) all His work itself proclaims His “glory.” This is itself the perfect end of all. 3. But yet the psalm is not ended. He who delights not in judgment, but in blessing, is yet shown in two final verses in His mastery over the evil and in the abiding blessing that succeeds. The “flood” (mabbul) is here a word only used in Scripture for that which destroyed the world in Noah’s day. It does not follow that the direct application is to that and yet the reference must not be slighted. Here is now a second Flood, of which that old flood was, in fact, a type.

Another world has now come to an end, and a wholly new state of things follows. At this flood too Jehovah has sat enthroned; and Jehovah now sitteth (openly) as King forever. But He who is on the throne is still -oh, bless Him for it! -the patient Minister to His people’s need. Still they have need: for the smooth path now as for the rough one hitherto, they need, and He “giveth strength,” and “Jehovah blesseth His people with” unending “peace.” Amen.